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Shabok's Scourge Warlock Guide - Soulbinder Fury - Mod 7 (Strongholds)
Kill it with Fire: Shabok’s Guide '''''to the Fury SW - Mod 7 (Xbox, 3k+ Item Level Recommended)'' Please note this is an end game build and is not the optimal DPS for any SW under 3k IL. Once you hit 3k IL, Fury will be your go-to tree for optimal DPS. That being said, this build is still '''very '''effective at mid-range IL, and can still bring a lot to the table. Again, I encourage you to play with whatever build you have the most fun with. Hello fellow Warlocks and welcome to my guide! Please keep in mind that the following is my personal opinion. It is designed around what I feel is the min/max (most optimal) build for PvE, as I refuse to touch PvP until they fix it. There are, of course, many different ways to play, but this is what I feel has brought the most consistent success. This is NOT the end all be all of doing damage, merely a starting point. This is an RPG, after all, and you should play however you want. That said... There are many critical points you must first understand in your role a Warlock: * You are a glass cannon. This means you deal lots of damage but can’t take a hit. At all. Ever... :'( * Your one and only job is to deal as much damage as possible as quickly as possible * The best party utility you can offer is to melt faces. Do it, and do it well. * Until you hit a high Item Level, you'll need a tank in the form of a companion during leveling, or teammate during dungeons/skirmishes * Combat advantage is your best friend and we’ll talk about that later * Curse. Everything. Always. Pressing RB is your new compulsion as a Fury Warlock. It takes ~.1 seconds to cast and increases your damage to the point that it’s worthless to attack anything without cursing it first '''Common Abbreviations that I’ll be using in the guide: * SW – Scourge Warlock * FB – Fiery Bolt * KF – Killing Flames * DT – Dreadtheft * WB – Warlock’s Bargain * HG – Hadar’s Grasp * ED – Essence Defiler * DSA – Dark Spiral Aura * DPS – Damage Per Second * WC – Warlock’s Curse * LC – Lesser Curse * BT – Borrowed Time * DtD – Dust to Dust * ACC – All Consuming Curse * RI – Resistance Ignored * CA – Combat Advantage Character Creation The best race for SW is Tiefling, followed by Human and Dragonborn. The racial choice probably matters the least in overall DPS, but some races are not “viable” in the min/max sense. As a Tiefling/Dragonborn You’ll want to roll for 18con/18char/12int/10 for the rest. Human can just go for highest Con/Char they can. High constitution gives us bonus damage via our feats, charisma for bonus CA damage, and intelligence for the RI. Powers Be sure to max out TT, DT, KF, SS, HG, WB, BT, DtD, ACC, Immolation Spirits as you get post 70 power points. Feats Heroic: * Toughness 3/3 * Weapon Mastery 3/3 * Energizing Curse 1/5 * Empowered Rituals 3/3 * Determined Casting 5/5 * Devastating Critical 3/3 * Blood Pact of Cania 2/5 Paragon: * Critical Promise 5/5 * Burning Soul 5/5 * Helltouched 5/5 * Infernal Wrath 5/5 (can be swapped for Offering to the Prisoner once your RI reaches 60% if you'd like) * Killing Curse 5/5 * Executioner's Gift 5/5 * Brutal Curse 5/5 * Murderous Flames 5/5 * Creeping Death 1/1 Boons Your choice. Anything that increases DPS, AP Gain, Life steal, etc is recommended. Gear First, grab the ensorcelled pact blade and grimoire off the Auction House. They're extremely cheap and will be better than even your artifact weapons until you get them to at least blue and ''get the proper class features rolled onto them. Get these as soon as possible during leveling. If you have another character, simply buy them and share them with your SW. After that, I highly suggest saving up all of your AD so you can buy the Lostmauth Set: Hoard Necklace, Golden Belt of Puissance, and Horn of Blasting. This is the most important set for a DPS class, hands down. The tooltip description does not sound impressive, but it is buggy and that 10% weapon damaeg hit scales up with buffs. All other sets are inferior for DPS by a long shot. Crit and ArmPen are your more important stats until you reach 60% RI. You'll want to start running skirmishes to get Seal of the Elements and purchase the Alliance Assault gear (T1). Don't forget to either salvage or donate Alliance gear you do not need. After that, farm T2's (eToS, eCC, eGWD) and replace any pieces of armor that do not offer ArmPen and Crit as a stat with an elven piece. Wait until your Icewind Dale Campaign is high enough and you can use Elemental Infusion to make them ''Elemental Elven/Alliance Assault. If you're lucky you'll get the Elemental version as a loot drop in the dungeon. Once dragonflight gear is available, go for the Dragonflight Raid gear. Throughout all of this you should be leveling up Jewelcrafting and Leatherworking to get your Personalized rings and Shirt/Pants. Enchantments: Azures in all offense. Dark in all defense for life steal. Dragon Hoard/your preference in utility. Vorpal in weapon and Soulforged in Armor. You’re gonna want to get Armor penetration up to at least 6200 (60% RI) as soon as possible. This is because no enemies have higher than 60% damage resistance in PvE. If you do decide to keep the Infernal Wrath feat as I have, you will only need 55% RI. Your priority should be Crit and Arm Pen until you reach this point. After that go for power/critical strike. A high critical strike is very important for the SB because the more we crit, the more sparks we generate. More sparks = more SS spam, more healing, more damage, more AP between mobs. Life steal is the best defense for DPS, especially casters since more HP from Radiants in Defense will not adequately mitigate our squishiness. Artifacts: * Sigil of the Devoted/Wheel of the Elements (active slot. Sigil of the Devoted for AP gain, Wheel for fire 30% DPS bonus. I do not recommend using the Wheel unless you also have the Flail Snail. You’ll need the AP gain from Sigil otherwise.) * Lostmauth Horn of Blasting (Lostmauth set bonus with necklace and belt) * Thayan Book of the Dead (stats and AP gain) * Lantern of Revelation (great stats and free from a quest while leveling) Weapon: * Pact Blade of Elemental Fire (go for ED for at will bonus) * Elemental Fire Grimoire (go for DtD for calss feature) Mounts: Flail Snail (AP gain) Companions * Augment with Profane Runestones in offense. You shouldn’t use an augment that doesn’t have 3 offense slots. Once you hit about 3k IL, start going for companions with 3 greater or better Bonding Runestones. If you get a fact proccing companion, such as the Zhentarium Warlock (no great talismans are available right now), Lightfoot Thief (not available right now), Young Yeti, or Shadow Demon (mod 8) then you will get more stats with 3 or more stacks of Companion’s Gift than you ever will with an augment. 30k+ power is easily achieved. Just make sure you have all your other stats in order. * Air Archon * Fire Archon * Erinyes of Belial * Earth Archon/Dancing Blade/Blink Dog/anything that grants a CA bonus Strategy Your absolute, number one priority is gaining AP in order to cast TT as often as possible. Most of your damage will be coming from this Daily. TT curse 2-3 targets with the most health and watch them melt with DT. Try and circle around the mob so that you can A) gain Combat Advantage as often as possible and B) maximize the number of TT’d targets you are hitting with DT. CA means, when a target is flanked, all attackers gain 15% damage + CHA bonus. The visual indicator is a yellow number with a sword. Creeping Death Mechanics When targets affected by your Warlock's Curse take Necrotic damage from you, they are afflicted with Creeping Death. Creeping Death deals 100% of the Necrotic damage over 8 seconds. Creeping Death stacks up to 100 times. You'll notice that many of the feats int he Fury tree also add necrotic damage to all of our powers. The key to being a good Fury Warlock is to understand how CD works. Some things that are supposed to proc it actually do not. For example, Warlock's Bargain does not proc it, despite being a non-consumable curse, unless there you also use your RB Warlock's Curse. It is important to remember that your RB power and only ''your RB power will proc it. That's why it's important to both curse before and after each encounter power to ensure that Creeping Death is stacking. I have a few different rotations that I equip depending on the situation: ''Soloing or in a dungeon/skirmish with 2 other high DPS characters – * Essence Defiler/Dark Spiral Aura * Dreadtheft * Fiery Bolt * Killing Flames * Tyrannical Threat * Dust to Dust * All Consuming Curse (all times in a group)/Borrowed Time (solo) The reasoning behind this is that a lot of the SW’s best damage is DoT. The issue in this situation is that most trash mobs are going to die before Creeping Death can have a chance to proc long enough to make a difference. Because of this, you’ll want to go for high burst damage. FB and KF offer this. Make sure to aim KF at the target with the least amount of health. It offers fantastic damage along with the Muderous Flames feat. Single Target fight/Bosses with zero or very few adds-'' * ED/DSA * Hadar’s Grasp * Killing Flames/Warlock’s Bargain * Soul Scorch * Immolation Spirits * DtD/ACC Hadar’s Grasp give us amazing spark generation with the Lostmauth set. Killing Flames or Warlock’s Bargain is up to you. Killing Flames is good if you feel very comfortable curing before and after each encounter power. If you choose WB, it is an unconsumable curse. The rotation in this case would be WB – WC – HG – SS – SS –WC , etc. If you want to maximize DPS in this case, make sure you time HG immediately after WB. Their cooldown are different, so you’ll want to cast WB right when HG is at ~2 seconds left on the cooldown timer. ''Dungeons/Skirmish when there is not much high level DPS: * Essence Defiler/Dark Spiral Aura * Dreadtheft * SS * Killing Flames * Tyrannical Threat * Dust to Dust * All Consuming Curse Again, your goal here will be to pop TT and cast DT. Spam SS until you run out of sparks. Recurse if TT is down and cast KF on a low health, cursed target. Rinse and repeat. Dragonflight 10-15sec before fight: Dragon Potions, Tymora's Lucky Coin, Elixir of Accuracy, Invocation Blessing (these are stackable believe it or not. using one at a time is pointless) Rotation: Warlock's Curse -> Spirits -> Sigil OR Wheel/Lantern/Some other DPS buff -- Always use artifact after Spirits because it takes the spirits a few seconds to ready, aim, fire. This way they are doing damage for the max time the DPS buff is active. - WB - WC - HG - WC - Spam SS/ED -- Loop/Repeat until Spirits up. Cast HG immediately after WB. Timing is once HG is at 2 seconds cooldown, cast WB - WC and by then HG will be ready. Use SS/ED until HG is at 2 seconds.Recurse after a couple SS. Always do artifact after spirits because it takes the spirits a few seconds to ready, aim, fire. That's all for now. I'll be updating as I think of new things to put on here, as well as once the new Mod comes out and I can test a few things. Above all, remember to have fun! Good luck out there.